[Footnote 2: It is difficult to make out the numbers. The above figure is given by Cornwallis in a letter to the Lords of Trade, July 24, 1749 (see Mr. Brymer's _Catalogue of Canadian Archives_, 'Nova Scotia,' p. 142). On the other hand passages were taken for over 2,500 (p. 138). Haliburton says, 'in a short time 3,760 adventurers with their families were entered for embarkation.' Parkman puts the number at about 2,500, including women and children, Kingsford at 1,176 settlers with their families. Parliament for some years continued to make annual grants for the colonization of Nova Scotia, 'which collected sums,' says Haliburton, 'amounted to the enormous sum of 415,584 pounds 14_s_. 11_d_.'] [Sidenote: _The Lunenburg settlement._] Old soldiers do not always make good colonists, and Cornwallis wrote home complaining of their want of industry, contrasting the English unfavourably with a few Swiss who were among the newcomers, and suggesting that an effort {221} should be made to introduce Protestant emigrants from Germany. Accordingly, German Lutherans were brought over through an agent at Rotterdam, the majority of whom were, in 1753, planted out at Lunenburg, a little to the south-west of Halifax, on the same side of the peninsula. Thus the outer margin of Nova Scotia was being sparsely colonized with English, Swiss, and German Protestants, while on the side towards the mainland, along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, the Roman Catholic Acadians remained French in heart and sympathies. [Sidenote: _The commissioners to fix the limits of Acadia._] [Sidenote: _Designs of the French on Acadia._] For three years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French and English commissioners, appointed to determine the limits of the French and English possessions in North America, wrangled at Paris, William Shirley being one of the English delegates; but they never came to any conclusion. The French now refused even to concede that the whole of the Acadian peninsula belonged to England, and wished to confine English sovereignty to its southern coasts. They were in fact resolved by bluff or by force either to regain Acadia, or, in default of attaining that object, to make its condition one of permanent insecurity and unrest. As related in the last chapter,[3] immediately after the Peace of Utrecht the intention of the French Government had been to transplant the Acadians to French soil, to Cape Breton Island and to Prince Edward Island, then known as Île St. Jean. For this policy they subsequently substituted the more dangerous plan of not removing the Acadians, but encouraging them to consider themselves still as French subjects while remaining under the British flag. After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, however, they reverted to their project of transplantation, finding that the British Government were resolved no longer to treat their subjects in Acadia as neutrals, and realizing that the Governor had now force at his back.